Tasweerein

I will be posting some processing techniques from time to time in between the photographs and this is the first. This is the technique I use most often to sharpen an image since I, almost always, shoot RAW. Hope someone finds this useful.

1) Make a copy of the final layer. I call it the final layer because usually sharpening is the last thing you should be doing to your image. You can do this by pressing CTRL+J or just use the menus to duplicate layer.

2) Go to Filter, then choose Other, then again choose High Pass. When the dialog pops up, you’ll see your image with the prominent features highlighted. You can adjust how much they are exaggerated or how little. I usually move the slider to between 5 and 10 depending on how much sharpening is needed. This bit takes a little experimenting to get the hang of. But it’s more or less the same as the “unsharpen mask” level bar.

3) Once above is done, press OK, and right click the new layer and select “Blending options” from the pop-up dialog box. And in the “Blending options” select “Overlay”, “Soft light” or “Hard light” depending on what suits the picture. I usually go with “Overlay”. Click OK.

4) Once you are done with the above, change the opacity of this layer to whatever suits the picture. I usually select around 60% and find that it works most of the time.

Basically the above gives you the same result as “unsharpen mask”, with the added bonus of being able to adjust the layer opacity, for more, or less of the effect to apply to your image.
There you have it! A simple effective way to sharpen the image.